


should have come earlier...

by villiblom



Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, and im also not a fan of how they did henry and zora like that, i dont know what this is but i wanted a zora meeting the squat type of fic, if that makes sense, this is before the elf fight but after the selection exam but before the result of the exam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25705543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villiblom/pseuds/villiblom
Summary: the one where zora meets the squad before the royal magic selection results are out but before the elf fight.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 44





	should have come earlier...

**Author's Note:**

> was in a writer's block for my one piece fic so i did this for my now second favorite anime but i still have no idea what it is. this is also inspired by a bakukiri fic i read recently but forgot the name of but bakugo had tattoos and piercings and that inspired this fic with the same 'i have a lot of secrets' type of mindset. also i love every single member of the black bulls even though they sometimes get on my nerves. i was trying to copy what zora would feel or think in these situations so im really sorry if it comes out harsher than expected. but enough talking, please enjoy and tell me what you think!

Zora was a mysterious man, and while the mystery did not start when he was a child, young and pure, willing to share anything he felt, saw or thought of, it certainly grew into him as he grew up and watched the honor of the famed Magic Knights his father regarded so highly get tarnished and spat on, used only by the highest of class to obtain even more power and fame for themselves, without a care for others. 

Zora began caring for himself at a young age despite being sent into a somewhat decent orphanage and began looking for a way, any way, to make himself stronger, strong enough that no one would ever be able to betray him the way his father had been betrayed. He began studying, paying enormous amounts of money for a few hours at the library’s back entry with a book, clutched tightly in his grasp, the dim yellow light continuously flickering on and off acting as his only source of light.

He used what he learned in life and began practicing his trap magic. Although it was a rather rare and unique type of magic, Zora knew it would be useless if he didn’t work on it and improve it enough that it could work both as defensive magic but also offensive magic. He enjoyed the parlor tricks he learned from his dad as he grew up but if he were to change the famed Magic Knights from the ground up, he needed to have the power, strength, and confidence to back it.

So, he did. He trained for nearly half a day every day, learned all he could about trap magic, and spent the remaining time he had left practicing it. When he finally got his magic to a desirable state, Zoro stopped in front of the dingy, dirty sink in his bathroom, and looked at his reflection in the dirty, cracked mirror.

Zora didn’t really think he was a narcissist but he had enough sense to know his father was considered rather handsome, despite being a lowly commoner, and those genes had clearly passed down to Zora himself. His bright red hair -another thing he got from his father- hung loosely over his ears, barely brushing his shoulders and his blue eyes, dim and lifeless stared back at him. While he was handsome in his own right, Zora couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. He needed something more, something different, something that would make him stand out from the crowd and not be forgotten. He wanted to be remembered. If not for his magic, then at least his appearance.

So, he changed it. Zora went back to his small room and dug around in the even smaller cabinet next to his bed, searching for one of the family heirlooms -if he could even call it that- he had taken before his father died. 

He had a moment of ‘aha!’ as his fingers landed on the familiar, smooth curving of a wooden doll and pulled it out. Zora looked at the doll in his hands -its hair had been styled upwards as if he’d been hit with electricity magic and a single strand of bright red hair, identical to his own, hung down over the doll’s forehead. The doll’s eyebrows matched the vibrant red of its hair and just above the right eyebrow, a few centimeters away from his hairline, were two small black piercings. The doll’s eyes were a bright blue and had dark eyeliner to match with the edges tapering off into a particular type of scribble, arching up towards his hair on each side. From the nose downwards as far as he could see was a black mask that stretched out into a wide, nearly sadistic grin where it met his mouth, revealing large, sharp white teeth. Similar to its brow, the left side of the doll’s mouth had three small black piercings, each equal distance to the one before it.

His dad clearly hadn’t finished designing the remaining part of the doll, leaving it only with a long black mask and some puffed out pants with a belt laced with fur at the top and bottom. But that didn’t deter Zora. He knew it was the one for him. As he looked down at the doll, he felt a familiar warmth fill him and wondered if his dad had made this doll to be just like him. Zora couldn’t ask him -for obvious reasons- and decided that he would become this doll. Everything about its appearance was just what Zora wanted, daring, flashy, eye-catching, and most of all, unforgettable. 

He took the doll with him, pocketing it and gathered what little money he had, praying it would be enough as he left his room and went towards the darker part of the district, in search of someone skilled enough to make his wish come true.

* * *

Zora joining the Black Bulls was what he personally defined as the, and quote, “weirdest fucking day of his life,” -considering he had been beaten by a Magic Knight Captain in a  _ fucking alley _ and  _ then _ had a black cloth, fitted with the Bull’s logo thrown at him- but what others said was his wild and abrasive personality finally finding a place to fit in. The Black Bulls, being the lowest of the Magic Knights, were made up of the craziest, destructive and impulsive people Zora had ever had the pleasure of not meeting.

He heard stories as he walked down the street, how the captain -Yami- had destroyed two buildings while fighting off rebels from an enemy kingdom. Or how the young woman, with the vibrant wine-colored hair, had drunk herself to sleep in a bar with barely any clothes on. Or how the shortest one of them all had  _ devoured _ ten pantries in under a minute and was still hungry after. The stories made him chuckle, wondering how on earth the squad still remained afloat if all they ever did was cause trouble rather than solve it.

He soon learned how it remained afloat when he found himself paired up with one of the youngest new additions to the squad during the Royal Knights qualification exams. The short brat was insufferably loud and nosey, but Zora couldn’t deny the raw talent he saw in him. Zora carefully observed him and the other newbie,  _ the oh-so-talented royal _ , and while their personalities were enough to have Zora considering murder, their magic, battle sense, and overall skill were nothing to laugh at.

Zora clicked his tongue in distaste. Yami had an unlikeable habit of handing off the Black Bull’s robe to anyone he saw fit -or anyone who amused him if Zora was being honest- and he somehow managed to find the hidden talent and potential everyone else overlooked solely based on their class or appearance. Although he was still yet to understand how the large man that never spoke and only exhaled large puffs of smoke or the other man, creepily hiding in the background, face caked in goth-like makeup, had any sort of hidden talents that amused Yami in any way.

Zora saw the talent the drunk woman -Vanessa- had during the games despite not participating and only using her magic when the other one, the one with the spatial magic was about to be killed by his deranged younger brother. The other two, the second loudest one -Magna, was it?- and the battle crazed genius -Luck- also had incredible magic even though the latter boy was clearly more naturally attuned to using magic freely. The voracious girl with the bottomless stomach had a peculiar kind of magic Zora had never heard of before but was also really handy and capable, despite spending most if not all her time submerged in a mountain of food. 

Zora held his tongue throughout the rest of the matches, keenly observing and watching his members as they struggled and fought through each test until it ended and the Wizard King called it a day. He also announced that the results would take nearly a fortnight to be decided and then announced but until then, they were all free to go.

Zora ignored the cheers and sighs of relief as the Magic Knight slowly began filing out of the arena. He stayed back waiting until the very last one had gone before slinking out himself, groaning when the Wizard King silently appeared behind him and began talking to him. Zora brushed off his comments but listened keenly when he began retelling the story of his dad. It still hurt to know that his father’s death could have been prevented if the people of this country weren’t so hell-bent on discriminating against each other solely on whether they were a person of noble descent or not. It was clear the Wizard King felt the same way he did, but Zora didn’t bother to listen after that, knowing the man was going to begin lecturing him on not wearing his own squad’s robe.

Zora disappeared for a while, and for the first week after the exams, he remained mostly hidden, only leaving his house when he had to. It was during the first few days of the second week that he realized how  _ unbearably bored _ he was. The exams had been exciting and as much as he hated to admit it, fighting alongside his members was an exhilarating experience that left his fingers twitching and itching to do it again, to set traps before-hand and have the enemy unsuspectingly walk right into them.

He decided after nearly an hour of deliberating on whether to go outside and pick a fight with whomever he saw worthy, or to just go and pick on the easiest target he knew to leave his house and go with the latter, taking a right turn at one of the back alleys and making his way towards the large Black Bull’s hideout in the deeper, darker parts of the woods.

* * *

Seeing Zora -Xerx, Asta reminded himself- walk into their squad so casually, hands pocketed deep into his pants, tongue idly tracing the shape of his teeth, nearly gave him -and the rest of the members, previously casually conversing or playing some sort of magic came, now staring at the door with eyes bulging from their sockets and mouths agape- heart failure.

He jumped up and pointed his finger at Zora, asking loudly what the other man was doing here and how he even found out about the place. Asta’s voice soon rose to a higher pitch as Zora reached forward and grabbed his finger, twisting it backward as he told him to not point his finger at his seniors.

“What the hell do you mean senior?” Asta groaned out, body doubled over in a useless effort to follow his finger and not have it be snapped backward. “Aren’t you in the Purple Orcas squad?”

Zora clicked his tongue and twisted Asta’s finger further, smirking slightly as the short man released another pained scream. “Idiot. You can’t even tell your own squad members apart now? I’m hurt.” Zora said sadly, but his mouth was still pulled up in a sadistic smirk as he watched Asta squirm and try to get his finger out of Zora’s grasp.

“Squad member?” Magna bellowed from Zora’s left side. “What the hell? You’re one of us? You’re a Black Bull?”

Zora didn’t reply to that but moved his shoulder aside so they could all see the traditional black robe, the edges lined with gold famously attributed to the squad and the giant Bull’s logo, designed with the same colors, resting on the left side of his chest.

Several gasps filled the room, one being Asta but none of them really knew if it was from the pain of having his pointer finger in the bone-breaking grip of Zora, or if it was from the shock of seeing him wearing the Black Bull’s robe.

“Oya,” Vanessa slurred from the table on the far left corner. She was mostly undressed sans her underwear and bra that was a matching color to her hair. She held a bottle of mostly empty alcohol, the liquid sloshing around dangerously as she swayed from side to side, clearly already intoxicated despite the early hours. “Do we have another newcomer?” 

“Would you like some food?” The short one, Charmy, asked, pressing a plate of frankly too much food into his thigh. Zora looked down at her and took the plate if only to stop the annoying pressure of the plate into his leg and kept it on the closest table.

“Uhm...Ah! Don’t look at me!” The woman currently hiding underneath the table beside Vanessa exclaimed and covered her face with her hands. “It’s nice to...um..see...um...you…”

“Who the hell is that?” Zora asked gruffly and Charmy, still standing beside his legs said, “It’s Gray! She’s really shy and doesn’t like people looking at her but she has really good transformation magic!”

“Hey, hey, are you strong?” Luck said to his right side and Zora’s lip wrinkled in distaste at the crazed look in the young man’s eyes.  _ ‘Just how insane is everyone in this squad if they hang around a battle-crazy maniac like this kid?’ _

“Stop it, Luck!” The white-haired royal chided from the table Asta was previously sitting on. “You can’t keep asking everyone you meet to fight you!”

“Eh…” Luck whined and turned to her, “Why not?... I want to fight…”

Noelle huffed and flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. Zora had to suppress the urge to grab a pair of scissors and cut them off. “Yami will get mad at you again, you know. We can’t keep asking Henry to fix the base every time you, Stupid Asta here or Magna destroy it you know!”

Zora must have had a confused look on his face because Charmy quickly explained who Henry was, “He’s the one who made this big base for us! He’s sort of cursed,” Charmy’s bright mood dimmed considerably, “so he can’t really hang out with us as much but he’s always in the base somewhere.”

As if he was listening, Zora heard the sound of the stone grinding and shifting as a part of the wall in front of him shifted, turned, and twisted out of view to reveal a shaggy, long-haired man in bright white clothing. A dusty light brown grimoire hung suspended in the air next to him and was opened on a page. 

Zora heard the faint sound of someone clearing their throat and then the room silenced as Henry began speaking, “Um...It’s...very...nice...to….um...finally...meet...you...Zora….” The man took several pauses in between each word and Zora felt his annoyance level hit the fucking roof.

“Speak up! I can’t hear a fucking word you’re saying!” Zora yelled and Henry appeared to panic but even that was slow and lazy as if he were a sloth and not a real person.

“Sorry…” Henry said with an even longer pause than before. “I’m just not….used….to….seeing….so...many….friends….here….”

“Who the fuck is your friend you slow-speaking bastard?” Zora yelled again, “I’m not friends with anyone that speaks slower than a sloth! And why the fuck are you so far away? I can’t fucking hear you!”

“Ah...that’s because….” Henry began in his aggravatingly slow pace and Zora almost flung a chair at him. “If you get...too close to me….I will….”

“You will what, you bastard?” Zora growled out but was interrupted by the loud sound of a chair scraping against the tiled floors. A pair of hands slammed down on the table and Zora turned to it, finding a man, roughly his age if not younger with his hair covered over one side of his face and blood steadily dripping down his nose and onto the table.

“Shut up, you stomach-flashing asshole! I can’t hear what Mary is trying to say over your yelling!” The man, -Gauche, Charmy helpfully provided- yelled and turned back to the table only to let out a scream and reach for something Zora couldn’t really make out.

“Look at what you’ve done, you sharp-teeth bastard!” Gauche screeched and stormed towards him, holding out a framed photo of a young girl with features similar to the man in front of him. “You made me get blood on my precious photo of Marie, what will you do about this you flashy-haired asshole!”

“I can’t tell if you’re complimenting him or insulting him…” Noelle muttered to herself and Charmy nodded in agreement, now perched atop of Zora’s shoulder, one handheld around his neck to secure herself as the other one dug into a piece of meat procured from somewhere.

“Ha? How is that my fault? You’re the one that was bleeding and not looking at where you’re going!” Zora said back and unknowingly clenched down on Asta’s finger, ignoring the loud yelp of pain the young man let out as he bent even further back. 

“What the hell are you talking about? If you hadn’t begun yelling with Henry over there, I wouldn’t have stood up to shut you up!” Gauche countered and Zora couldn’t believe his ears.

“That’s because he talks so slowly! How the fuck am I supposed to understand anything he says!” Zora argued and in the back Henry began mumbling over his words, shrinking in defeat when Gauche and Zora simultaneously told him to shut up.

“Pay me back, you asshole,” Gauche growled and held his hand out, his grimoire slowly rising up from his side and heading towards his palm. 

“Not in this lifetime, you sister-loving weirdo…” Zora snarled and beneath Gauche’s feet, the markings of a trap, big enough to encompass Gauche began to form. 

Gauche took note of the trap magic and jumped back, pulling out two separate mirrors and pointing them at Zora as he began chanting out one of the spells. However, before he could finish, a large fist made up of water rose up in the air and slammed down on both Gauche’s and Zora’s head, immediately flattening both males as the common room became soaked.

Noelle huffed again and threw another piece of hair over her shoulder, “That’s what happens when you dare try to fight in front of a royal, you commoners.” 

However, her words fell on deaf ears over the sound of a loud crack and an unholy scream filling the common room as Asta clutched his now broken finger and screamed in pain. It seemed that when Noelle’s punch landed on both men, the force had made Zora lean backward, trying to avoid it when he pulled Asta with him and forced him into the line of the punch, making him take the brunt of it all which consequently led to his finger getting snapped in two.

Magna let out a loud chortle and began cackling loudly, laughing at the three men, currently sprawled over the wet floor. “He-! I can’t believe he actually-!” Magna’s sentences were cut short as each time he tried saying something his eyes would open, land on the three bodies, and then break out into another fit of laughter.

“Asta’s finger is-!” Magan let out another chortle and fell off his chair as he continued to laugh while Luck, on the left side of Noelle let out a light laugh as well. Charmy, having jumped off Zora’s shoulder just before the punch landed, pulled out a plate of food from thin air and went to Asta, eagerly feeding him spoonful after spoonful as he continued wailing about his broken finger.

Vanessa took another shot out of her bottle and let out a loud, satisfied sigh, fondly caressing her bottle as chaos broke out behind her. Gray was still under the chair but was mumbling words of encouragement towards Asta. 

Gauche appeared to be unconscious, or in a delirious state as he kept mumbling his sister’s name in his sleep, a near-endless stream of blood pooling underneath him as he imagined his sister playing beside him, a bright smile on her small features as she called out to her brother, over and over again.

Zora was lucky to have not passed out, due to Asta taking the majority of the punch’s force and sat there, fully soaked, his arms spread out to his sides with Asta sitting on his heels in between his legs, his cries muffled as a spoonful of food entered his mouth every second. He looked at the ceiling, partly in wonder and amazement, and watched again as the ceiling twisted, turned, and shifted, revealing the shaggy, aqua-colored hair now associated with Henry.

Zora watched, puzzled, wondering what on earth the sloth-like man was going to do. Zora watched as the man parted his hair with his hands and revealed his face. He mouthed down something and Zora rolled his eyes and closed them, valiantly trying to ignore the genuine smile pulling on his lips. 

_ ‘Welcome home, Zora!’ _

**Author's Note:**

> Tabata give Zora more screentime with the rest of the squad. i will only beg twenty-five times and that will be it.


End file.
